Obama already scrapping one of Bush’s major rules – Jackets required

Everyday is business casual day in the Obama White House. Afterall, he’s the decider now.

It’s the same Oval Office. The same desk. Even the same curtains. But President Obama has already made one major change: Go through eight years of White House photos, and you won’t find one of former President Bush in the Oval Office without his jacket on. It wasn’t just a personal preference. In the Bush administration, it was a rule: Jackets in the Oval Office — and now, it seems, one of the first Bush-era regulations to get scrapped in the Obama White House. – From CNN

As Taegan Goddard writes, “It was a rule during the Bush administration that no one ever enter the Oval Office without a jacket.” And Politico’s Ben Smith muses, “Still unclear which press staffer will be the first to show up in flip-flops.” Though this change is no doubt trivial in the larger scheme of things, it at least signifies yet another example of a symbolic break with the past. Also, the Oval Office’s less stringent dress code could very well prove psychologically advantageous to visitors and aides alike by creating a more comfortable atmosphere in which to handle presumably stressful situations – - better to worry about major economic and foreign policies to right the American ship than about gratuitous sartorial punctilios. – From Huffington Post